Washington’s Leverage Falls Short in Sudan

The News:

U.S. envoy Massad Boulos urged the UN Security Council on August 24 to tighten sanctions related to the war in Sudan, while a U.S. draft resolution proposes expanding the arms embargo to cover all of Sudan and explicitly include drones. The step raises a broader question: why has Washington failed to stop the war since 2023?

Background:

Since the war began, Washington has moved on two parallel tracks: mediation in Jeddah in partnership with Riyadh, and gradual sanctions on the leaders of both sides and their financing and arms networks. Despite this intensive activity, the fighting has continued and expanded.

Causes:

• Mediation without enforcement: On May 11, 2023, the army and the Rapid Support Forces signed the "Declaration of Commitment to Protect Civilians," but violations continued and truces collapsed, and talks were suspended in June 2023. The Geneva talks of August 2024 changed nothing, as the army boycotted them in protest at the UAE's participation. The ability to bring adversaries together does not mean having the leverage to make them comply.
• Gradual, not decisive, sanctions: They began on June 1, 2023, with four companies linked to both sides, then targeted Abdelrahim Dagalo, then field commanders and financing networks in 2024. The turning point came in January 2025 with sanctions on Hemedti alongside a determination that the RSF had committed genocide, then on Burhan, and later on Gibril Ibrahim and the al-Baraa bin Malik Brigade over their ties to Iran, as well as networks recruiting Colombian mercenaries. But the war economy has become transnational and operates outside the U.S. financial system.
• Unchanged military calculations: Washington adopted the principle that the war cannot be won militarily, while both sides remained convinced that improving their battlefield position would give them a stronger hand at the table.
• Ignoring external backers: Both sides' ability to keep fighting depended on the UAE for the RSF, and on Iran, Russia, Egypt, and Turkey for the army, according to the New Lines Institute. Washington only turned to this dimension in August 2026.

Implications:

Sanctions raised the cost of the war but forced no one to end it. Jeddah turned from a tool to end the war into a mechanism for managing some of its effects, while the structure that ensures the flow of money and weapons remained intact.

Why It Matters for the United States:

The U.S. record in Sudan exposes the limits of pressure tools used in isolation and detached from the warring parties' real sources of power. The proposal to expand the arms embargo is a belated acknowledgment that the key to the war lies with external backers, but its impact will remain limited as long as Washington acts without a clear political track and international consensus. The Washington Institute (July 2025) proposes a framework to overcome this: a joint political declaration by the Quad, the African Union, and IGAD adopting the Jeddah platform as the sole track; a unified executive secretariat in Jeddah; turning the Jeddah Declaration into a binding agreement through a Security Council resolution in coordination with UN envoy Ramtane Lamamra; and full civil society representation to prevent domination of the process by the military or foreign powers.